2 minutes ago, ElDiablo14 said:

Sounds like we should be selling our games to the most "posh" council in Australia 😅

Any chance we can play down in Toorak?

Any Ovals near Entrecôte?

Toorak has been taken over by new money cashed up bogans who barrack for Collingwood.

Edited June 3Jun 3 by John Crow Batty

As mentioned above, we actually make a lot of money from this game, as opposed to a probably loss of cash if <30-40k turn up to the 'G.

The match also suffers from poor timing, being in the mid season break with loading etc impacting performance.

No surprise this game has coincided with drop offs before.

While I would love to watch the Dees at the G every week, I would rather us pocket cash for a game against the Saints that I can watch from home rather than Marvel.

1 hour ago, whatwhat say what said:

oh for the days when gus and jesse were dominating and we were belting the crows by 90 or so...

the ground is not the problem

the skills are

i still remember that game quite vividly. I think its where Lever did his knee right?

Let's be honest, the $500K we earn from the game equates to around 2000 adult members, or 1000 memberships with a reserved seat.

I'd rather we spend our money trying to find some new long term members and sponsors, rather than flying 50 or so people up to Alice Springs to have a mid season holiday and to put in a half arsed effort on the field.

There's no doubt we do plenty of good work in the Alice Springs community, but it is not translating to financial benefits for the club or even to support at the ground when we play there. By that measure we could hold our pre season camp up there, or play pre season games there, and still achieve the same good.

I think its time to move on and to focus on building connections within Melbourne.

6 minutes ago, poita said:

Let's be honest, the $500K we earn from the game equates to around 2000 adult members, or 1000 memberships with a reserved seat.

I'd rather we spend our money trying to find some new long term members and sponsors, rather than flying 50 or so people up to Alice Springs to have a mid season holiday and to put in a half arsed effort on the field.

There's no doubt we do plenty of good work in the Alice Springs community, but it is not translating to financial benefits for the club or even to support at the ground when we play there. By that measure we could hold our pre season camp up there, or play pre season games there, and still achieve the same good.

I think its time to move on and to focus on building connections within Melbourne.

And building success on the field.

33 minutes ago, John Crow Batty said:

Toorak has been taken over by new money cashed up bogans who barrack for Collingwood.

ie Eddie Boofhead McGuire.

1 hour ago, Adina88 said:

It depends how you define the 'NT project'. Is the objective to go in with tunnel-vision to play a game of football and ignore the context and take home 4 points? Or is the objective to grow the game by extending it beyond the eastern states? I'd argue the investment the club is making by doing so much community work is kind of priceless. Maybe going up a day early and taking minds off football is 'the problem'. But Max has already said that the hour of Footy 4 Life clinic they had the day before the game was the best hour of his life (ok, probably an exaggeration but obviously demonstrates the personal impact it had). You can't quantify the impact of that on a footballer. It's incredibly myopic in my view to reduce the whole Alice trip as 'a loss of 4 points'. As Max says, there's a greater good at play.

I don't want to argue with Max or minimize the financial contribution this game gives us but we have a poor record there and it's effectively given us one more interstate game on top of the usual Kardinia park game one can count on.

I humbly suggest the club find other ways for revenue.

I'm also sure that sitting on planes saps energy from players so it should be avoided.

As for home crowd advantage it's definitely not there. The other crowds are much more more loud. Either we are just quiet and or there are less of us.

The main criteria should be winning. Making finals consistently and the money will come.

Also we play way too many Sunday games and I think this impacts on the size of our crowds.

Just my two cents. And it's a lot to expect people these days to have the sort of money to go to these games .

I get that it's good for footy but I really don't believe it's good for us.

Share it around. Maybe Kardinia park as well.

With Tasmania about to enter the competition, it's going to get harder to make finals.

We need every advantage we can get. Scrapping or reducing this, would be a good start.

Alice Springs is not The problem. We are. Our opponents never seem to have an issue playing there.

We go for money. Only the club finance community can decide if it worth if form their perspective. (Imagine we were still selling games to Brisbane 🤮 )

The Issues:
The bigger question is our performance affected by all the community work we do prior to the game. Does it remove our focus and our performance? Can we do that post game, as for the game before a bye.

Its not our job to promote the game in the NT, as its a AFL state already. There isn't enough people living there to see it as a growth in membership like the hawks impact in Tassie (Yes it timed well with their premiership run).

And too often there is more opposition supporters even one year the person tossing the coin for our home game had an opposition scarf on....like WTF...what does the club think get out of it for promoting our brand/club.

36 minutes ago, Pipefitter said:

Alice Springs is not The problem. We are. Our opponents never seem to have an issue playing there.

100%. Last i checked our opponents live just down the road and have to fly just as far.

The team feels like it continually needs to be pushed to perform. This is worrisome because our system and state of play doest not allow us a win that is ugly. Collingwood were able to beat Norf with half of their side out. That is the pinnacle of a strong system.

1 hour ago, John Crow Batty said:

Despite the club existing mostly on poverty row it is still perceived by the mainstream football community as a toffs and elitist club with the Mayfair touch hence lack of populist support. Mostly hardscrabble Alice residents would rather support any other club against us.

This is so far from the truth. The overwhelming majority of the locals are going for us. They don’t know of nor would they care about the Melbourne stereotype. We could lose every single game there and nothing would change that. Yes there are supporters of the opposition (St Kilda and Essendon in particular seem to attract supporters) but nowhere near the number of Dees supporters.

4 minutes ago, Ghostwriter said:

This is so far from the truth. The overwhelming majority of the locals are going for us. They don’t know of nor would they care about the Melbourne stereotype. We could lose every single game there and nothing would change that. Yes there are supporters of the opposition (St Kilda and Essendon in particular seem to attract supporters) but nowhere near the number of Dees supporters.

Yes there were plenty in Dee jumpers when we were up there, but the camera kept playing to the Saints group near the big gum tree, every time that they did something, which was often, I didn’t see them pan to us much at all.😁👍

The Alice game is about more than winning and the money.

If we're so worried about our record there, then maybe we should do pre-season there or at least a practise match or two.

If the game produces outcomes like the link below, I don't mind at all that we play there.

School's in: Footy fuels attendance and the trip of a lifetime for remote kids - https://www.afl.com.au/news/1335552

2 hours ago, GS_1905 said:

i still remember that game quite vividly. I think its where Lever did his knee right?

Nope, he did his knee on the Docklands car park vs Footscray

49 minutes ago, Ghostwriter said:

This is so far from the truth. The overwhelming majority of the locals are going for us. They don’t know of nor would they care about the Melbourne stereotype. We could lose every single game there and nothing would change that. Yes there are supporters of the opposition (St Kilda and Essendon in particular seem to attract supporters) but nowhere near the number of Dees supporters.

That's good to know, I guess when we're losing it always feels like our suppoorters are outnumbered, on average what would you say the % of the support is for us?

I think there is enough evidence over the years that the players simply don't like playing and travelling up to Alice.

I hope Steven Smith clears this mess up and keeps our home games at the G.

4 minutes ago, Roost it far said:

That's good to know, I guess when we're losing it always feels like our suppoorters are outnumbered, on average what would you say the % of the support is for us?

Easily 75% possibly more. We have a group of DA members who attend every year and they always talk about how many Dees supporters are there, compared to oppo. As @DeeZone said, the TV coverage would have you believe it was 50/50 but in reality that’s not the case. And honestly, we could get thumped every year and that wouldn’t dampen their enthusiasm one iota. The kids in particular look forward to this game months out and talk about it for months afterwards. For some it’s the highlight of their year.

5 minutes ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

I think there is enough evidence over the years that the players simply don't like playing and travelling up to Alice.

I hope Steven Smith clears this mess up and keeps our home games at the G.

Again, not true. Sure, some of them may not love it, but the majority do. Maybe in the past players didn’t like it, but this current crop certainly do.

2 hours ago, John Crow Batty said:

Toorak has been taken over by new money cashed up bogans who barrack for Collingwood.

Goes by the name ... Eddie

58 minutes ago, DeeZone said:

Yes there were plenty in Dee jumpers when we were up there, but the camera kept playing to the Saints group near the big gum tree, every time that they did something, which was often, I didn’t see them pan to us much at all.😁👍

Yeah I watched it on TV and it annoyed me greatly that they neglected to show different sections of the crowd. It’s particularly annoying because our DA people that made the trip spent much time giving out flags to the adoring fans and setting up a cheer squad, a pretty decent one at that, considering only eight of them were there.

Edited June 3Jun 3 by Ghostwriter

I was at the game and was surprised to see as many St Kilda supporters as dees fans, particularly when it came to merchandise sales too. It seems that after 10 years we have made minimal community impact which is really disappointing.

I think it's time to find a new location (country Victoria) or as members pay a little extra.

2 hours ago, YesitwasaWin4theAges said:

I think there is enough evidence over the years that the players simply don't like playing and travelling up to Alice.

I hope Steven Smith clears this mess up and keeps our home games at the G.

No chance we play 11 home games at the G. Two would be at Marvel with the Marvel tenants now begging for and the AFL granting them games at the MCG. That’s why our MCG home game allocation has reduced from 10 to 9 this year.

That doesn’t change the fact that I want us out of this venue and have the home game transferred to Marvel with full awareness that it won’t be at the G.

I keep thinking it’s ground hogs day when I sit down and watch an Alice Springs game - every time we put in a sloppy, careless, NIL attention to detail kind of performance full of arrogance and a complete disrespect to the opposition and the set shot.

4 hours ago, Pipefitter said:

Alice Springs is not The problem. We are. Our opponents never seem to have an issue playing there.

Exactly and the way we turned up to play wouldn't matter where we played the game we would have still got a beating. Team just didn't show enough fight and unfortunately it seems to be a bit of the norm after some good wins. Has happened many times over the years. They get us going and excited then let us down.

7 hours ago, Rab D Nesbitt said:

ie Eddie Boofhead McGuire.

Goes back further like when Lou Richards and Jack Hamiltion who later became VFL chief lived there.

5 hours ago, Ghostwriter said:

This is so far from the truth. The overwhelming majority of the locals are going for us. They don’t know of nor would they care about the Melbourne stereotype. We could lose every single game there and nothing would change that. Yes there are supporters of the opposition (St Kilda and Essendon in particular seem to attract supporters) but nowhere near the number of Dees supporters.

I haven’t been there but it appears that every game I have watched played in Alice on TV has the crowd effects mike pointed at oppo supporters.